[medic8]

If you're an avid MMO gamer, the question has probably crossed your mind a few times: "how much is my MMO character worth in real world cash?" (I highly suggest people to check out how much their Aion characters are worth!) Most MMO gamers these days can recognize that virtual assets have real world value. But what makes them valuable? Perhaps bonuses to character stats, or a unique graphic design to your weapon. These are the aspects of value that the game designers have created. However, rarity of virtual assets and the challenges of attaining them is another aspect of value that the player has created. So who contributes to the value of virtual assets? Is it the game designers? The player? Or is it a combination of both, and if it is, then who contributes more to its worth?

Discuss.

[VashioKun]

The time I've wasted that other people are lazy to do.

[theqqtrain]

VashioKun, on 16 May 2010 - 01:20 AM, said:

The time I've wasted that other people are lazy to do.

So wait sitting in a chair for hours on end isn't lazy?

[Gak]

theqqtrain, on 16 May 2010 - 02:02 AM, said:

So wait sitting in a chair for hours on end isn't lazy?

If he's online farming/grinding/pwning or whatever, that's not being lazy. Otherwise, working at an office would mean being lazy too. Or sitting down studying would be considered lazy. Your comment is just a lame excuse to troll.

Anyway back on topic, I think it's a bit of both that creates value... if there was a crappy item that looked ugly, had crap stats, and was also tough to get it wouldn't be worth much (vendor trash ftw) so in that case even the player's efforts wouldn't have value. But it also goes the other way around too, if there's an awesome item that was easy to get, it also wouldn't have much value either since everyone could get it. so yah i'm 50/50 on it

[theqqtrain]

Gak, on 16 May 2010 - 02:15 AM, said:

If he's online farming/grinding/pwning or whatever, that's not being lazy. Otherwise, working at an office would mean being lazy too. Or sitting down studying would be considered lazy. Your comment is just a lame excuse to troll.

Anyway back on topic, I think it's a bit of both that creates value... if there was a crappy item that looked ugly, had crap stats, and was also tough to get it wouldn't be worth much (vendor trash ftw) so in that case even the player's efforts wouldn't have value. But it also goes the other way around too, if there's an awesome item that was easy to get, it also wouldn't have much value either since everyone could get it. so yah i'm 50/50 on it

No at an office you getting paid to do your job, when your studying your doing something productive to help You out in life. Your just sitting there playing a game yea lazy. Sorry but your troll does not work on me, now try to think of something else stupid to say. LOL fail

[MutoofAsh]

How is sitting and watching TV for hours any different? Oh because millions and millions of people do it, so it's okay. And it shows the news? Everybody does something for entertainment. If this happens to be thier cup of beer who are you to judge? The fact that you are here posting on the forums shows to me how hard you think before you speak in the first place.

[theqqtrain]

MutoofAsh, on 16 May 2010 - 07:01 AM, said:

How is sitting and watching TV for hours any different? Oh because millions and millions of people do it, so it's okay. And it shows the news? Everybody does something for entertainment. If this happens to be thier cup of beer who are you to judge? The fact that you are here posting on the forums shows to me how hard you think before you speak in the first place.

Exactly Lazy is lazy...

[dirtyklingon]

i think trying to value your character sheet and in game assets in irl currency is the cancer that's been killing the mmo industry since before wow.

in l2 it was kinda cool knowing that in korea you could order a pizza and pay for it using adena. and the RMT was a big part of the player driven economy. nobody nyerked they couldn't mak emoney from crafting or selling mats, because the farmers kept mat prices low so people could craft without RMTing or farming for months to get all the mats together.

ofc l2 also had a simpler mat itemization, where low level mats dropped form mobs of all levels, more of them the higher the mob level, and higher level mats were crafted. certain item craft specific mats were more rare and often raid only drops.

almost everyone RMTed, and while i played there was a huge drop in the price of adena on my server, dropping to like 1/10 of the value of when i started.

in wow a lot of people talked about eh value of their toons. in vanilla the value of an account was based on the amount of epics a toon had. but all those epics were devalued when TBC hit. after that epic gear became more common so i imagine the price of toons went down. although i could see there being a market for accounts with multiple epicced out 80s of various fotm classes.

nowadays mmo assets have absolutely no value imho. RMT farmers start spamming new mmo's from day one, and the in game spammers are usually the the sort of people that will steal your cc info and hack your account.

used to be you get really decent service from RMTers. and power leveling meant sitting in a bot or farmer party afk. not giving up your account info to strangers. ofc it's become harder to power level the old way just because leveling isn't about camping mob spawns in one spot anymore. and then there's aion that running a lowbie through quests only hurts them in exp/levels per hour.

the value of aion accounts is not surprising i guess. a 50 with green/blue gear of any class is worth less than the price of an aion retail box on sale. but throw a gold set on that same toon and the value goes up immensely.

and then there's eve where fags that spend all their time buying codes to sell in game to camp warp gates with free ships value all their in game assets at real word money based on teh going rate of the $15 for a month codes in game. so when they score a big kill of a ship carrying a huge amount of stuff for some retarded reason they can say "WOW I JUST MADE $20K USD LOLOLZO!

but seriously if no one is buying this nyerk with irl cash then it's not worth anything to anyone.

RMT nowadays carries too many risks, irl risks. like getting your cc hacked. meanwhile mmo companies are incorporating RMT into their games under the names of points for items and such or "player services" $25 for a name change to reset drama with every guild on teh server so i can ninja their banks all over again? nyerk YES! make every member of my guild pay $25 to transfer to a new server to reset our rep because we've zerg recruited all the half decent players on our old server? ROCK ON!

[medic8]

dirtyklingon, on 16 May 2010 - 10:26 AM, said:

i think trying to value your character sheet and in game assets in irl currency is the cancer that's been killing the mmo industry since before wow.

I don't think valuing your character irl currency is the cancer since part of the idea of your virtual assets being worth something has made MMOs even more popular than before. It's rather a symptom, and in your view, I think the true cancer would be the game design in MMOs as they heavily encourage the need for RMT whether it's intentional or not.

boo @ this thread being moved

[dirtyklingon]

medic8, on 16 May 2010 - 02:31 PM, said:

I don't think valuing your character irl currency is the cancer since part of the idea of your virtual assets being worth something has made MMOs even more popular than before. It's rather a symptom, and in your view, I think the true cancer would be the game design in MMOs as they heavily encourage the need for RMT whether it's intentional or not.

boo @ this thread being moved

lol if you think RMT and real world value of virtual assets is what makes mmo's popular.

otherwise second life would be huge wouldn't it?

[medic8]

dirtyklingon, on 16 May 2010 - 02:40 PM, said:

lol if you think RMT and real world value of virtual assets is what makes mmo's popular.

otherwise second life would be huge wouldn't it?

lol no, i definately do not think RMT is what makes MMO's popular because there are several factors that make them popular: i.e pvp, social aspect, aesthetics, etc, but i think RMT is just another one of those factors that has helped it's popularity grow.

haha second life is actually a lot bigger than many ppl think... this year they hit 18 million accounts... active or non-active population, that is pretty huge if you ask me.

[Calindor]

The time, nothing else.

[Tritus73]

Even when Vanilla Wow was out the time invested into a max lvl/well geared character was never worth what you could sell it for.1000 bucks for a character it took 5 months to lvl/deck out to the max? Holy hell you can get a job and make more than that! I feel mmo online assets are worth 0.000

There were some reports of people getting "lucky" and having some richie rich buy their account for an amazing amount on ebay ...but that was super rare!